Well-Being

My last day. Today is one of the cool days that seem to come once a week in this glorious land basking in radiant sunshine. Later perhaps there will be a “Katabatic Wind” that happens when the heat of the hills draws air off the sea, creating gusts that bang the shutters to and fro all night. At least the mozzies and midges can’t battle against those winds, unlike the calm hot nights when they get under the skin. Bring a net if you have one.

The bell will ring in five minutes. The rhythms of Kalikalos are wonderfully reliable. There will be bread, olives, tomatoes, feta, and copious mild olive oil for lunch on the terrace under the vines where grapes and !Kiwi! fruits slowly ripen. A small strong sweet Greek coffee, a nap, and then a drive down the hairpin road to the pale glowing shingle beach, float in salty blue sea. Watch the deep blue sky shade to silver as the sun sinks behind the mountain, and the moon, full tonight, glows pale in the East.


My window to the rosy sunrise over the Aegean.

Life here feels timeless, ancient, and utterly present. Although the names and faces of people change, there seems to be a spirit of the place that welcomes into its heart those who come this way, that lives here throughout the year, breathing in, and breathing out. Claudia, Jessica, Dera - angels of love and light and service - David, Mark, Enid, Monica, Jock, lightly supporting and encouraging with humour and integrity and dedication.

When I considered coming here to facilitate the Well Being Retreat with The Work, the required tasks (washing up, food prep, gardening) looked like chores. Now I see that each contribution brings a sense of connection and fun. "Wash your plate and one other thing" sounds earnest and virtuous, yet brings a tremendous sense of well-being.

Tamara Alferoff, London

Art from Within

We are seated cross-legged in the Roundhouse at the Kalikalos Centre in the village of Kissos. Today we are four women, including our facilitator, Annabel Aguirre, an Art Therapist from Cornwall. The Roundhouse is a wonderful liminal structure that is half-indoor and half-outdoor. Its eight walls are made of bamboo blinds which can be rolled to reveal different views, different pictures. Behind us is the vegetable garden providing salad leaves and cucumbers and the promise of tomatoes to come. In front of us, the view begins with roses and hydrangeas in front of the characteristic fish-scale slate rooves of Pelion and, way beyond, three miles and 1500 feet below, the dark blue Aegean.

((The photograph shows Annabel at work with a different group two days later.)

Annabel invites us to lie down, relax and focus on our breathing. With my head on a cushion, I close my eyes and inhale scents of wild thyme and oregano and feel the warm breeze on my skin. We are guided into a meditation on where we’ve come from, where we are and what the future might hold and encouraged to stay with any images that come up. In a dream like state, I see images of flowers and of the earth and imagine my own birth 46 years ago.


We come back to the world and each other and each take a board and some paper. The suggestion is to paint or draw from the images that arose during the meditation, either on one piece of paper, or several.

In front of each of us is a pallette of poster paints, a selection of brushes, a jam jar of water. I am apprehensive and excited – painting is something I never do but often yearn to – to put colours on paper, to translate inner to outer in images. My inner critic is alive and well, reminding me of a school report where a teacher wrote – ‘her painting lets her down’ and a recent foray into art in adult education where two of us were relegated to copying pictures of boats from a book.

I look up and out into the view, the forests, the flowers, the slate topped rooves and see above it all, Helios, the sun god, warming and nourishing everything. I begin with that, a circle, red, orange, aflame – it’s the sun and it’s also my head at birth, entering the world, burning with new life. I am pleased that the marks on paper look something like I intended. Then I’m stuck – I want to paint the thighs of the mother giving birth but have no idea how to mix the colour of flesh – with Annabel’s guidance I find an approximation – red, white, a little green, some yellow, a dip of this, wash the brush, dip in again and an alchemy takes place.



The process is meditative, pleasurable, companionable – we are working in silence but around us is the hum of the garden, its bees and cicadas and beyond, the road to the village where the vegetable and bread sellers pass announcing their wares.

Eventually I fill the large sheet of paper with my sun at the centre and an ocean at the bottom representing the mystery of where we came from. The curve of the woman’s belly doubles as the forested hills, the trees, her pubic hair.

As I paint, I feel connected to where I am, here in Pelion. I am also provoked into thinking about my mother, creativity, my role in the world and how to move through the forests when I can’t see my destination. I have an impulse to add roses to the woman’s thighs and experiment with a few but then give up, not wanting to spoil the shape of my painting. Thinking about my mother giving birth to me makes me tearful and full of gratitude and I see that in my painting, the mother is more powerful than the woods.

When the four of us share our paintings and talk about the ideas that gave rise to certain images, we see patterns and connections. The paintings reveal and also conceal. I saw things in others’ work that they didn’t talk about, or they talked about in a way that seemed at odds with the image. As someone who works primarily with words, it was fascinating to wear my painting as a mask and yet be aware that others are guessing the various faces behind it.

I enjoyed this session. Although I shed some tears, I felt at peace afterwards and was pleased I’d chosen to put past, present and future together. A birth is full of pain – and my mother tells me horror stories about mine – and joy too. Here in the natural beauty of Pelion and the community of Kalikalos, the world in all its complexity, joy and sadness is reborn everyday as Helios rises over the mountains, bringing his warmth and fire.

Victoria Field, Cornwall, England

Victoria Field teaches creative words for health and well-being and was a facilitator at Kalikalos 10th – 17th July 2009. Her next open workshop is in North Wales in September – see http://www.falpublications.co.uk/falhtm/caemaboncourse.htm

Yasas !!!!

Hey, this is Claudia from Brazil, I'm volunteering at Kalikalos at the moment. I was in Anilio, our sister centre about 5km away, last week and it is a very beautiful place where you can be more in contact with the nature. This is my 3rd week here, I'm having so much fun, there is a different energy surrounding us every day. The village is nice, the beaches are awesome and I would recommend this place to anyone. You won't believe the sunrises... if you wake up early enough =P

Our Experience in Kalikalos

Hello from Kalikalos!

Here Hania and Georg, from Argentina and Germany. We are travelling through communities and landed in this amazing experimental project led by Jock Millenson. We are really amazed and surprised to find this mixture of vacations, seminars and comunal life. Quite a challenge!!!!

In our morning meeting, speaking about vision, lots of reactions came in...We had only one minute to express our opinions, hopes, observations and personal visions about Kalikalos and comunal life in general. This was great, because it led us to be essential.

So, we would like to share with you our 'minute'...
Having visited other communities around America, we find Kalikalos as an pioneer laboratory to learn day by day living in the New Earth, as it is today. We are challenged to mix and put together very different stages of life. How to do it...? These are some of the conclusions of this morning:

Give up our big western Egos, make lighter our "psicological luggage", learn to be simple, fast and effective. And understand that no matters how many success, or degrees we have, we are all in a kindergarden of communal life. Love and flexibility, are the priorities. Leave your old world behind and begin to be innocent and willing to learn again as a child. Pure love and high tolerance are our highest intentions to achieve. We try and try every day, it is no so easy...but is possible.

Any way, this is an exeptionally beautyfull spot, with blue waters and mysterious mountains around, led by an experienced guide like Jock, who lived in Findhorn, and can share a lot with us, gipsies and eternal seekers. We recommend everybody to come over and participate.

Blessings to all.

Hania & Gerog

Walk to Tympani Kissos

Yesterday, Mark took me on an incredible walk. Our journey was to Tympani Kissos, or the drum of Kissos. There is reason behind the name. Tympani Kissos is a place where rushing spring water comes gushing down Mt. Pelion in torential rapids and strikes the ancient rock below making the sound similar to that of mallets beating on a drum. When we arrived, the water was flowing slowly, and it made the sound more similar to a snare drum than a tympani drum, but what can you expect in july when it is in the eighties or nineties every day. Once the water rushed off the mountain it fell into a gorgeous clear pool. How refreshing this pool of ice-cold spring water must be on a hot summer's day. Unfortunately, Mark and I deemed it too dangerous to climb down to the pool because we weren't sure we could make it back up. So we spent the better part of an hour at Tympani Kissos and departed on a different route than we came on.

The route that we arrived on was quite spectacular. Mark, a seasoned hiker of Pelion told me he only discovered the route four years ago from a shepherd he met on his journey.

To be brief, we basically followed concrete channels and pipes that had been built for the purpose of diverting water from the spring to the villages of Mt. Pelion. At first we followed a concrete channel through the forest. This channel must have been hundreds of years old. There were parts of our walk were we had to balance on the channel, as we crossed the mountainside. Eventually we observed more modern channeling of the water through pipes. We continued our adventure through the forest and eventually heard the rapid rushing of water--we knew we were getting close.

On the last leg of our journey we had to traverse along a narrow path etched into a rock face where we had to crouch to avoid hitting our heads. We then heard the water rushing strong and "beating on the rock below". The last thing we had to do was to crawl through a dark mountain tunnel to get to the rock face overlooking the rushing water and the pool. This was an amazing walk and it was excellent to know that I had traveled one of the least-traveled paths in Pelion to see one of the most amazing sites in Pelion.

Jeremy Zaks, Queens New York

Course in Miracles at Kalikalos

Well, I've just spent two weeks on a beautiful mountain called PILION in mainland Greece close to the Aegean sea, staying at Kalikalos Holistic retreat centre in Kissos village. And what a blessing, in every way.

I came here to attend a FORGIVENESS workshop with COURSE IN MIRACLES teacher, Annie Blampied, from Sussex, England. Everything was great about this Centre, from its host, former academic psychologist Jock Millenson (a very experienced community leader) to the workshop with Annie, and what I would call "the community spirit". something that is hard to put in words, but is definitely alive and well here.

Till now I have lived mostly on my own or with my family, but here I found I really do like this community living. In fact I like it so well, that I think I will bring more of it to my own life. And when i can, come back here again probably.


We five participants (me and four women!) of the workshop dug deep in the sessions and faced our deepest shadows and we sure did let in some light! I would recommend Annie's workshops to anyone interested in improving their life situation, and where better to do it than in brilliant sunshine (despite us hitting a freaky June where the weather was hotter and sunnier back home in Surrey than it was here in Greece for a change) and on the beaches of the Pelion peninsula, still unspoilt by foreign tourism.

So I say, come out to Kalikalos and experience it for yourself!

Freddy Brant, Sutton, Surrey

Joys of Greek Vegetarian Cookery

We came together, three people from 3 different parts of the world and very different backgrounds. There was Mozza-a Finnish Norwegian Aussie; Caruthers aka Geoffrey-a crusty former Briton from Athens, and Peckhampam. Not forgetting Geoffrey’s companions Daisy and Toto the dogs and Archibald the tortoise, who hovered at the kitchen door expectantly.


From day one we hit it off and had fun, fun, fun, and cooking in the sun. Not only did we enjoy ourselves but so did everyone there who ate the food which had been prepared with love and humour, and NO stress. The two highlights on the food front were the feta and roast garlic turnovers (Daisy liked these as well snatching one from the hands of the guru-man) and the sundried tomato fritters which baked for two days on the marble stairs in the Aegean sun.



It wasn’t all cooking. There were early morning swims, taverna evenings by the sea at Damouhari where Mama Mia was filmed, and excursions in the beautiful Pilion.

Pam Cohen, London SE15